When I first heard we were reading a play from the 1700's I was very skeptical. Actually, I was dreading it. I was expecting dry and boring and after following the difficulty of Virginia Woolf, I was honestly not happy. But this play surprised me. As nerdy as it sounds I actually really enjoyed reading it! I found it absolutely hilarious and didn't mind recapping the story at lunch...and I actually laughed! I was trying to think of what it is about this play that makes it funny hundreds of years later? Is ironic love a topic that is funny no matter what time period? Was it funny just because we just came off of Woolf and it was easier to read Goldsmith? Maybe I was the only one who actually enjoyed this and everyone else just thought it was lame. - adi-c Feb 15, 2008
I also really enjoyed this play, but I was a little disappointed. Compared to many of the books we've read this year, it wasn't especially original or symbolic. It was fairly straight forward in its humor and plot. I'm not saying I didn't like this play. I did, but I guess I was expecting more given the other material we've read. I understand it was a satire of the dramatic plays at the time, and may have been original in that respect, but preceding it with Jacob's Room and following it with As I Lay Dying, it doesn't measure up. In some ways, it's a welcome relief for its simplicity, but this simplicity also offers less to post on, less character analysis to delve into. Did anyone else find it a tad disappointing?- AHa-c Feb 15, 2008
I know what you mean AHa. She Stoops to Conquer doesn't have complex ideas like Jacob's Room and As I Lay Dying. She Stoops to Conquer is an easy read. But, I think that sometimes one needs to have a break for the heavy symbolism and reflecting on the deeper issues of life just to enjoy Literature. I believe it is absolutely necessary to read for fun, and in all honesty, I do not think that contemplating every line in a book for its underlying message is fun. Maybe sometime in the future I will think differently in that regard, but as for right now, I think that an easy read is much more enjoyable. Educational?--Well that's another story. - cdu-c Feb 15, 2008
I have to agree a little more with adi on this one. Usually when we hear anything about "old" writing we automatically think it will be boring and hard to understand. However, as I was reading this play I almost forgot that it was written in the 1700s. I can only imagine how much audiences at that time got out of this play. We were told that audiences during Shakespeare's time understood all of his jokes. It's interesting to think about how much more people in the 1700s probably got out of this play than we even are able to. Granted, I believe, Shakespeare was written around the 1500s. That is 200 years that make a big differnce in the style of writing. However, I think I was just expecting writing that would be harder to read. Do you think it was just Goldsmith's style that made it almost pleasurable to read? Or was it the simple concepts and relatable themes that were able to transform through time?- kec-c Feb 15, 2008
Well I think that Goldsmith's style definitly contributed to why many of just enjoyed reading the play. We are really used to the style he used, but was taht really common for his time? I wonder if people who read it when it first was published struggled with reading it, much as the same we we did with Woolf's writing. Of course, Goldsmith's subjects and themes are ones that are carried well over the centuries. We have seen themes such as social class and family struggles in many of the pieces we have read, such as Hard Times and even Jacob's Room. I don't know if i would call these themes "simlpe" as kec did, though. To me, they seem quite complicated and often do not work out as we want them too. I, too, enjoyed much of the humor in the play. But in class, when we first began reading the play, Br Tom talked about how there was some humor that we may not get unless we were told about it. While I got a lot of the humor, i have a feeling there might be a few things that I missed. - MBe-c Feb 15, 2008
I enjoyed the play, but I didn't necessarily think that it was better than other ones that I have read. I think that it was influential in modernizing plays, but I personally enjoyed the old plays of Shakespeare more than I enjoyed this one. As KEc pointed out, it is written in more informal speech, which definitely makes it an easier read than others, but I don't think that that really makes the quality any better. As for it being "simple," I think it's more intricate than we're giving it credit for, but it certainly is simple compared to some of the books we've read this year. Despite that, though, I really did enjoy the play.- NVa-c Feb 15, 2008
Well NVa, I agree with some of your points, but tend to disagree with others. I actually really enjoyed this play probably more than any other play we read this year. Because it was written more informally and was probably more easy to read than most of the other plays were have studied this, I believed I felt that I actually knew what was going on most of the time. I mean I don't know if the quality was quite up to par with Shakespeare, but it was a decent play, and not everyone died like in most Shakespeare plays and almost everything in the end somehow worked out pretty, but the play was a comedy and it served its purpose. - kva-c Feb 15, 2008
" it doesn't measure up". Measure up in what standards? I feel this play is every bit of a masterpiece as Jacob's Room or As I Lay Dying. Every book is different, having different aims and different aspects of beauty. Perhaps a good way of illustrating this is to compare the idea of different plays with different movies. One cannot walk into "Crash" and try to apply the same measurements as "Borat". They are completely opposite movies, with two completely opposite motives. Mabye you were referring to depth and complexity in terms of these two books. Even still, "She Stoops to Conquer" is a very rich play, considering it was only 62 pages. Think of all the ironic twists, the humorous realizations of these twists, and the overall resolutions. The average person cannot up with such an intricate plot, starting with Marlow just looking for a place to stay and ending with him married to a woman he had previously treated like an object, a barmaid. Anyways, does a plays straightforwardness belittle it? Must a play's plot require heaps upon heaps of analysis just to be "good"? Must a work of literature contain x amount of characters, y amount of symbols, and z amount plot events to avoid "disappointment"? One excellent aspect of art, which literature is, is that it can take any form. Are the paintings of Raphael more "disappointing" than those of Picasso because they require less analysis and are more straightforward?- TMc-c Feb 15, 2008
Yeah, I did a little digging on the play and apparently it's one of the oldest out there still understandable enough to be performed nowadays for regular audiences, so that's pretty cool. Part of it is just what the narrator had said he'd wanted to do: make a funny play, not just a romantic-dramatic comedy. What's funny then's still funny now. Drama on the other hand changes as 'dramatic situations' tend to be different in different centuries. We don't have to deal with arranged marriages, or kings' whims, or stuff like that, but a funny marriage arrangement going awry is universal. So it's not just the fact that it's funny that makes it last, it's that it's funny because of a situation that has been applicable for centuries and will continue to be applicable enough to get. Really though, think of all the dramatic/sad/emotional plays you've read that aren't in considered 'classics' or 'shakespearean' You don't see many old ones still around. For that matter, a lot of Shakespeare's plays, the comedies, were comedies in our modern sense of the word: funny! Think of how many sexual innuendos he would stick in his plays. It's like the three stooges: humor that just lasts. It's too stupid or too comedic to matter whether it's old or not, which says a bit about the quality of the work. - AZU-C Feb 15, 2008
After a semester of reading plays steeped in symbolism and hidden meanings, this play was a breath of fresh air. Just to be able to read a book without analyzing every word of every sentence was like taking a deep breath after surfacing from a dive. When I saw this book was from the 1700s I initially cringed: I am doing a project in another class on theatre, and I remembered that, in England, theatre was dominated by sentimental comedies--ironically, most of which were rarely meant to be funny--which seemed unbearable; however, this turned out to be nothing of the sort. Looking back at my paper, I saw that I had actually quoted Goldsmith, who was a vocal opponent to sentimental comedies and wrote this one to parody them which, in my opinion, he did an excellent job of. - dsU-c Feb 16, 2008
I too liked this play. While some people were disappointed with its simplicity I loved it. It is about time that we’ve read a play where you didn’t need Br. Tom to explain a sentence word for word so we could understand what the author is getting at. As for the funny part, I can’t say that I really laughed a lot but it definitely made me smile in many situations, which is the best most books can do. I liked what Azu had to say about why the play is still funny. The ironic situation of arranged marriages and the sexual innuendos are still funny today. The fact that Shakespeare used sexual innuendos does not surprise and the fact that they are still funny surprises me even less. I guess you could say that sex hasn’t really changed over the last couple of centuries. The one thing I wish we had done was maybe read one of those sentimental comedies that Goldsmith was parodying. If we had read one of them I might have picked up on some more of his satire. - kli-c Feb 16, 2008
I don't know, when I heard we were reading a seventeen hundreds novel, I was also expecting dry, ironic humor and I feel that's mostly what we got. I just don't think that the standards of a play this old in terms of humor are as high as the average person's standards today. Yes they were crude (but so is shakespeare), but when you have movies like superbad and knocked up for five dollars down at the blockbuster, I just can't see myself picking a book like this for its humor over those two. One of the reasons I disliked the book so much was because it's humor and plot both rested on the lack of explanation of a single detail, that they actually found the house they were looking for and not an inn. I hate those type of stories. They are just so annoying. Romeo and Juliet has elements like that too. If one person in that play fully explained themselves, the whole book would fall apart. It just feels like an itch I can't scratch and maybe some people thrive off of that feeling or don't feel it at all, but I don't enjoy it when reading a novel.- MKo-c Feb 16, 2008
I was actually really excited when I first saw the book, because after taking a really long time to read Jacobs' Room, it was nice to see a really short book. When we read the first chapter in class, it was clear that this was going to be a fun an easy read, something I could see myself reading outside of school, which again was a nice change of pace. It may have not been laugh out loud funny, and it may not have Will Ferrell in it, but it was still worth my time. - jko-c Feb 16, 2008
I would have to say that this play has been one of my favorites. It is funny (it is a comedy, after all), with witty characters and a twisting plot. It is not so much a serious piece of literature in which everything is to be examined and analyzed; rather, I just went along with the play to see what happens. I definitately had a more relaxed feel with reading this play, perhaps due to Goldsmith's Prologue:
"I give it up--morals won't do it for me;
To make you laugh, I must play tragedy."
"The College YOU, must his pretensions back,
Pronounce him regular, or dub him Quack."
The Prologue was a refreshing way to start a work of literature. I liked Goldsmith's beginning here because he says it himself: it is up to us, the readers, whether we like it or not. I like that because it acknowledges that the play may not be everyone's fancy. He just wants to entertain and make us laugh--the definition of a true comedy in his eyes. Goldsmith wanted to change the nature of plays in England at the time. He saw "She Stoops to Conquer" as a TRUE comedy--a laughing one--as opposed to the sentimental/moral version. I am glad that Goldsmith took this step/risk because I surely enjoyed his style and the play overall. - AWr-c Feb 16, 2008
I, too, enjoyed this play because of its wit and unique characters. I also was surprised when I found out that it was written in the 1700's. I've come across several plays during jr. high and high school that I thought were going to be boring, but actually turned out to be quite hysterical, including A Midsummer's Night Dream. Although I had trouble with the language at times, I finally tried to get past the difficulties and tune my ears to what was really happening.
This play could be classified as nothing less than that of a modern romantic comedy. The continuous tricks, relationships, and disputes between family members and friends. All in all, I really enjoyed the fact that it was such a parallel story to what many movies and plays consist of today. - bzw-c Feb 16, 2008
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I also really enjoyed this play, but I was a little disappointed. Compared to many of the books we've read this year, it wasn't especially original or symbolic. It was fairly straight forward in its humor and plot. I'm not saying I didn't like this play. I did, but I guess I was expecting more given the other material we've read. I understand it was a satire of the dramatic plays at the time, and may have been original in that respect, but preceding it with Jacob's Room and following it with As I Lay Dying, it doesn't measure up. In some ways, it's a welcome relief for its simplicity, but this simplicity also offers less to post on, less character analysis to delve into. Did anyone else find it a tad disappointing?-
I know what you mean AHa. She Stoops to Conquer doesn't have complex ideas like Jacob's Room and As I Lay Dying. She Stoops to Conquer is an easy read. But, I think that sometimes one needs to have a break for the heavy symbolism and reflecting on the deeper issues of life just to enjoy Literature. I believe it is absolutely necessary to read for fun, and in all honesty, I do not think that contemplating every line in a book for its underlying message is fun. Maybe sometime in the future I will think differently in that regard, but as for right now, I think that an easy read is much more enjoyable. Educational?--Well that's another story. -
I have to agree a little more with adi on this one. Usually when we hear anything about "old" writing we automatically think it will be boring and hard to understand. However, as I was reading this play I almost forgot that it was written in the 1700s. I can only imagine how much audiences at that time got out of this play. We were told that audiences during Shakespeare's time understood all of his jokes. It's interesting to think about how much more people in the 1700s probably got out of this play than we even are able to. Granted, I believe, Shakespeare was written around the 1500s. That is 200 years that make a big differnce in the style of writing. However, I think I was just expecting writing that would be harder to read. Do you think it was just Goldsmith's style that made it almost pleasurable to read? Or was it the simple concepts and relatable themes that were able to transform through time?-
Well I think that Goldsmith's style definitly contributed to why many of just enjoyed reading the play. We are really used to the style he used, but was taht really common for his time? I wonder if people who read it when it first was published struggled with reading it, much as the same we we did with Woolf's writing. Of course, Goldsmith's subjects and themes are ones that are carried well over the centuries. We have seen themes such as social class and family struggles in many of the pieces we have read, such as Hard Times and even Jacob's Room. I don't know if i would call these themes "simlpe" as kec did, though. To me, they seem quite complicated and often do not work out as we want them too. I, too, enjoyed much of the humor in the play. But in class, when we first began reading the play, Br Tom talked about how there was some humor that we may not get unless we were told about it. While I got a lot of the humor, i have a feeling there might be a few things that I missed.
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I enjoyed the play, but I didn't necessarily think that it was better than other ones that I have read. I think that it was influential in modernizing plays, but I personally enjoyed the old plays of Shakespeare more than I enjoyed this one. As KEc pointed out, it is written in more informal speech, which definitely makes it an easier read than others, but I don't think that that really makes the quality any better. As for it being "simple," I think it's more intricate than we're giving it credit for, but it certainly is simple compared to some of the books we've read this year. Despite that, though, I really did enjoy the play.-
Well NVa, I agree with some of your points, but tend to disagree with others. I actually really enjoyed this play probably more than any other play we read this year. Because it was written more informally and was probably more easy to read than most of the other plays were have studied this, I believed I felt that I actually knew what was going on most of the time. I mean I don't know if the quality was quite up to par with Shakespeare, but it was a decent play, and not everyone died like in most Shakespeare plays and almost everything in the end somehow worked out pretty, but the play was a comedy and it served its purpose.
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" it doesn't measure up". Measure up in what standards? I feel this play is every bit of a masterpiece as Jacob's Room or As I Lay Dying. Every book is different, having different aims and different aspects of beauty. Perhaps a good way of illustrating this is to compare the idea of different plays with different movies. One cannot walk into "Crash" and try to apply the same measurements as "Borat". They are completely opposite movies, with two completely opposite motives. Mabye you were referring to depth and complexity in terms of these two books. Even still, "She Stoops to Conquer" is a very rich play, considering it was only 62 pages. Think of all the ironic twists, the humorous realizations of these twists, and the overall resolutions. The average person cannot up with such an intricate plot, starting with Marlow just looking for a place to stay and ending with him married to a woman he had previously treated like an object, a barmaid. Anyways, does a plays straightforwardness belittle it? Must a play's plot require heaps upon heaps of analysis just to be "good"? Must a work of literature contain x amount of characters, y amount of symbols, and z amount plot events to avoid "disappointment"? One excellent aspect of art, which literature is, is that it can take any form. Are the paintings of Raphael more "disappointing" than those of Picasso because they require less analysis and are more straightforward?-
Yeah, I did a little digging on the play and apparently it's one of the oldest out there still understandable enough to be performed nowadays for regular audiences, so that's pretty cool. Part of it is just what the narrator had said he'd wanted to do: make a funny play, not just a romantic-dramatic comedy. What's funny then's still funny now. Drama on the other hand changes as 'dramatic situations' tend to be different in different centuries. We don't have to deal with arranged marriages, or kings' whims, or stuff like that, but a funny marriage arrangement going awry is universal. So it's not just the fact that it's funny that makes it last, it's that it's funny because of a situation that has been applicable for centuries and will continue to be applicable enough to get. Really though, think of all the dramatic/sad/emotional plays you've read that aren't in considered 'classics' or 'shakespearean' You don't see many old ones still around. For that matter, a lot of Shakespeare's plays, the comedies, were comedies in our modern sense of the word: funny! Think of how many sexual innuendos he would stick in his plays. It's like the three stooges: humor that just lasts. It's too stupid or too comedic to matter whether it's old or not, which says a bit about the quality of the work. -
After a semester of reading plays steeped in symbolism and hidden meanings, this play was a breath of fresh air. Just to be able to read a book without analyzing every word of every sentence was like taking a deep breath after surfacing from a dive. When I saw this book was from the 1700s I initially cringed: I am doing a project in another class on theatre, and I remembered that, in England, theatre was dominated by sentimental comedies--ironically, most of which were rarely meant to be funny--which seemed unbearable; however, this turned out to be nothing of the sort. Looking back at my paper, I saw that I had actually quoted Goldsmith, who was a vocal opponent to sentimental comedies and wrote this one to parody them which, in my opinion, he did an excellent job of.
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I too liked this play. While some people were disappointed with its simplicity I loved it. It is about time that we’ve read a play where you didn’t need Br. Tom to explain a sentence word for word so we could understand what the author is getting at. As for the funny part, I can’t say that I really laughed a lot but it definitely made me smile in many situations, which is the best most books can do. I liked what Azu had to say about why the play is still funny. The ironic situation of arranged marriages and the sexual innuendos are still funny today. The fact that Shakespeare used sexual innuendos does not surprise and the fact that they are still funny surprises me even less. I guess you could say that sex hasn’t really changed over the last couple of centuries. The one thing I wish we had done was maybe read one of those sentimental comedies that Goldsmith was parodying. If we had read one of them I might have picked up on some more of his satire.
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I don't know, when I heard we were reading a seventeen hundreds novel, I was also expecting dry, ironic humor and I feel that's mostly what we got. I just don't think that the standards of a play this old in terms of humor are as high as the average person's standards today. Yes they were crude (but so is shakespeare), but when you have movies like superbad and knocked up for five dollars down at the blockbuster, I just can't see myself picking a book like this for its humor over those two. One of the reasons I disliked the book so much was because it's humor and plot both rested on the lack of explanation of a single detail, that they actually found the house they were looking for and not an inn. I hate those type of stories. They are just so annoying. Romeo and Juliet has elements like that too. If one person in that play fully explained themselves, the whole book would fall apart. It just feels like an itch I can't scratch and maybe some people thrive off of that feeling or don't feel it at all, but I don't enjoy it when reading a novel.-
I was actually really excited when I first saw the book, because after taking a really long time to read Jacobs' Room, it was nice to see a really short book. When we read the first chapter in class, it was clear that this was going to be a fun an easy read, something I could see myself reading outside of school, which again was a nice change of pace. It may have not been laugh out loud funny, and it may not have Will Ferrell in it, but it was still worth my time. -
I would have to say that this play has been one of my favorites. It is funny (it is a comedy, after all), with witty characters and a twisting plot. It is not so much a serious piece of literature in which everything is to be examined and analyzed; rather, I just went along with the play to see what happens. I definitately had a more relaxed feel with reading this play, perhaps due to Goldsmith's Prologue:
"I give it up--morals won't do it for me;
To make you laugh, I must play tragedy."
"The College YOU, must his pretensions back,
Pronounce him regular, or dub him Quack."
The Prologue was a refreshing way to start a work of literature. I liked Goldsmith's beginning here because he says it himself: it is up to us, the readers, whether we like it or not. I like that because it acknowledges that the play may not be everyone's fancy. He just wants to entertain and make us laugh--the definition of a true comedy in his eyes. Goldsmith wanted to change the nature of plays in England at the time. He saw "She Stoops to Conquer" as a TRUE comedy--a laughing one--as opposed to the sentimental/moral version. I am glad that Goldsmith took this step/risk because I surely enjoyed his style and the play overall. -
I, too, enjoyed this play because of its wit and unique characters. I also was surprised when I found out that it was written in the 1700's. I've come across several plays during jr. high and high school that I thought were going to be boring, but actually turned out to be quite hysterical, including A Midsummer's Night Dream. Although I had trouble with the language at times, I finally tried to get past the difficulties and tune my ears to what was really happening.
This play could be classified as nothing less than that of a modern romantic comedy. The continuous tricks, relationships, and disputes between family members and friends. All in all, I really enjoyed the fact that it was such a parallel story to what many movies and plays consist of today. -